Page:Cornelia Meigs-The Pirate of Jasper Peak.djvu/199

 you for some time. The snow can lie very deep in these valleys.”

“Snow,” Hugh had exclaimed, “why, it is only October!”

“Remember it will be November in a week,” Oscar replied, “and that this is a climate very different from yours. Here the winter begins early and lasts long and we have to be ready for it. There are supplies enough to last until spring, I have made sure of that, and plenty of wood, so  that there is no danger of your needing anything. I will come back to you as soon as I can, but at this season all plans go by the weather.”

So Hugh had written a long letter to his father for Oscar to send, explaining why mail must be  uncertain and just what he was doing.

“I ought to learn a great deal from this experience,” he ended, “enough to make even you feel that I am fit for service in France. I am bound that I will make it before I am twenty-one.”

It did not look much like winter to-day, even though the woods were so bare and the hillsides  so brown. The boys had arranged that they